News and Analysis
Report: Online Shopping Experiences Disrupted by Last-Mile Delivery Delays
Online grocery sales reached nearly $98 billion in the U.S. last year. Restaurants and home essentials sellers also saw incredible growth. While demand for the local delivery of goods purchased online continues to skyrocket, a new report finds that persistent delivery disruptions in the last mile threaten to impact customer retention and blunt long-term industry growth.
Unstructured Data Becomes an Untapped Opportunity for Brands
Unstructured data now represents 80% to 90% of all new enterprise data, according to Gartner, but just 18% of organizations are taking advantage. Unstructured data, like product images, customer audio files, and comments from social media, represents an untapped opportunity for marketers.
How Brands Can Adjust Marketing to Reassure Customers amid Inflation
J. Walker Smith, Chief Knowledge Officer, North America, at the data analytics and brand consulting company Kantar, checked in with Street Fight to share original research on customer attitudes toward inflation and discuss how marketers can shift practices to best address this challenge.
Commentary
The Power and Shifting Meaning of Local
Urban, suburban, and rural residents have different shopping habits in their “local” areas. Many marketers are investing in mobile location-based ads — BIA/Kelsey predicts US spending will top $26 billion this year — yet as a retailer your goal isn’t just to reach consumers but to connect with them by acknowledging their different perspectives.
Talking to your customers requires a customized strategy that prioritizes location and takes their everyday lives into consideration. Harnessing the power of local starts with knowledge: where your customers live, what they want, and how to deliver it on behalf of your brand.
Now More than Ever, Local Strategy Differs by Vertical
The putative benefits of competing in vertically oriented channels come at a greater cost than was the case when GMB provided a unitary platform for all industries. Simply put, Google is serving the specialized needs of price-conscious travelers or those who want greater assurances when hiring a service professional, and in so doing, the company is creating additional channels to generate revenue through ads. More and more businesses will have to get used to spending their way toward greater exposure to their desired audiences — which is only odd in light of the fact that so much of local marketing has historically been organic in nature.
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Amazon and Google Announce New Initiatives Focused on SMBs
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Introduces Startup Campaigns for Small Businesses… Amazon Plans Startup SMB Delivery Services for Its Own Packages… How a Proposed California Privacy Regulation Could Impact User Data-Driven Business…
Study: Challenges Persist with One-Partner Programmatic Strategy
84% of brands want to bring their programmatic ad spending in-house as a way to gain more control over what’s become an opaque process. The problem? A study by Visto shows that advertisers who use just one platform are losing out on opportunities to lower inventory costs and efficiently delivery on KPIs.
Heard on the Street, Episode 6: Engineering, Surfing, and Acting with Frost Prioleau
How do you bring brand-like programmatic advertising to local advertisers who spend less than $4 per day? It takes good software and partnerships to hit the sweet spots of automation and customization, according to Simpli.fi co-founder and CEO Frost Prioleau, our latest guest on Heard on the Street.
Street Fight Daily: AT&T Buys AppNexus, Programmatic Recovering Post-GDPR
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… AT&T Is Buying Ad Platform AppNexus, Reportedly for $1.6 Billion or More… A Month After GDPR Took Effect, Programmatic Ad Spend Is Starting to Recover… App Publishers Must Avoid the Audience Circulation Trap..
Beyond Likes: Win Hearts with Emotional Marketing